DEGENERATION. 291 
telling quotations, while nowhere in literature can we 
finda more merciless arraignment of folly, laxity, and 
“rot” as expressed in literary or artistic form. 
On the other hand, Nordau himself exhibits some of 
the defects which he criticises. His work shows a de- 
cided lack of the sense of perspective. He takes him- 
self, and especially his subjects, too seriously.* He 
gives no scientific analysis of the symptoms they show, 
while causes, effects, symptoms, and imitations alike 
pass with him as evidences of degeneration, His as- 
sumption that degeneration among the higher classes is 
a phenomenon of our times alone, and his supposition 
that it is the inheritance of fatigue, nervous exhaus- 
tion, and the diseases and degeneration conditioned by 
them, has but slight foundation. The proposed remedy 
of Societies for Ethical Culture to act as public judges 
of literature and art seems puerile, and it is not clear 
that his proposed Index Expurgatorius of fool-litera- 
ture would “banish the writings of lunatics from the 
shelves of all respectable booksellers.” It would adver- 
tise rather than suppress. 
‘A remedy for degeneration can not be applied in 
any easy fashion. Sanity is the antidote for insanity, 
cleanliness of thought and action in life for folly and 
crime. It is true, as has been said, that “vice, crime, 
and madness are called by different names only through 
social prejudice.” In like manner virtue, purity, and 
wisdom are largely convertible terms, The sane man 
is like a well-made watch—trained to 
keep correct time under all conditions 
of temptation, pressure, or environment. The “ mat- 
toid” is full of “vibrancy”; he is affected by all sorts 
The mattoid. 
* “There is such a thing as nonsense, and when a man has 
once attained to that deep conception you may be sure of him 
ever after.”—BAGEHOT. 
